After the experience of his Twitter@Pontifex account, which is followed by more than 25 million people in 9 languages, Pope Francis has now joined Instagram under the name “Franciscus.”
Instagram is a social network that allows users to take pictures and videos and share them on many other social services. It is thus a new frontier that will allow the Pope to reach the world–especially the world of youth, since many young people are enthusiastic Instagram users.
“Instagram will help recount the papacy through images, to enable all those who wish to accompany and know more about Pope Francis’s pontificate to encounter his gestures of tenderness and mercy,” said Dario Viganò, the Vatican’s prefect of the Secretariat for Communications.
Msgr. Viganò concluded his press release by citing the words of the Pope in his Bull launching the Jubilee Year of Mercy, saying he hoped that the Holy Father’s presence on this social network “will open us [all] to more fervent dialogue so that we might come to know and understand one another better” (MV 23).